Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 1 (1897).djvu/157

CHAPTER IV

The cruelty, follies, and murder of Commodus—Election of Pertinax—his attempts to reform the State—his assassination by the Pretorian Guards

Indulgence of Marcus The mildness of Marcus, which the rigid discipline of the Stoics was unable to eradicate, formed, at the same time, the most amiable, and the only defective, part of his character. His excellent understanding was often deceived by the unsuspecting goodness of his heart. Artful men, who study the passions of princes and conceal their own, approached his person in the disguise of philosophic sanctity, and acquired riches and honours by affecting to despise them.^[1] His excessive indulgence to his brother,^[2] his wife, and his son, exceeded the bounds of private virtue, and became a public injury, by the example and consequences of their vices.

to his wife, Faustina; Faustina, the daughter of Pius and the wife of Marcus, has been as much celebrated for her gallantries as for her beauty. The grave simplicity of the philosopher was ill calculated to engage her wanton levity, or to fix that unbounded passion for variety which often discovered personal merit in the meanest of mankind.^[3] The Cupid of the ancients was, in general, a very sensual deity; and the amours of an empress, as they exact on her side the plainest advances, are seldom susceptible of much sentimental delicacy. Marcus was the only man in the empire who seemed ignorant or insensible of the irregularities of Faustina; which, according to the prejudices of every age, reflected some disgrace on the injured husband. He promoted

1. See the complaints of Avidius Cassius. Hist. August, p. 45 [vi. 14]. These are, it is true, the complaints of faction; but even faction exaggerates, rather than invents.
2. [L. Verus, his brother by adoption.]
3. [Siquidem] Faustinam satis constat [constet] apud Cayetam, conditiones sibi et nauticas et gladiatorias elegisse. Hist. August, p. 30 [iv. 19]. Lampridius explains the sort of merit which Faustina chose, and the conditions which she exacted. Hist. August, p. 102 [xvii, 5 ]. [There is no trustworthy evidence for the truth of these charges].